Undiscovered

I look at you, you bite your tongue
You don't know why or where I'm coming from

But in my head I'm close to you

We're in the rain still searching for the sun.

You think that I want to run and hide

That I keep it all locked up inside

But I just want you to find me.

I'm not lost; not lost, just UNDISCOVERED

And when we're alone

We are all the same as each other.

You see the look that's on my face

You might think that I'm out of place

I'm not lost no, no, just UNDISCOVERED.

Well the time it takes to know someone

It all can change before you know it's gone

So close your eyes and feel the way

I'm going with you now

Believe there's nothing wrong.

I'm not running.

I'm not hiding,

But if you dig a little deeper,

You will find me.

-James Morrison-

Strange

"Webs of events that grew together to become a net in life. Life was a thing that grew wild. She supposed there was an overall pattern, a design to it.

She'd never found one.

She thought of the tools she had gathered together, and painstakingly learned to use. Futureprobes, Tarot and I Ching and the wise wispfingers from the stars ... all these to scry and ferret and vex the smokethink future. A broad general knowledge, encompassing bits of history, psychology, ethology, religious theory and practices of many kinds. Her charts of self-knowledge. Her library. The inner thirst for information about everything that had lived or lives on Earth that she'd kept alive long after childhood had ended.

None of them helped make sense of living.

She watched the sealight grow."

Keri Hulme, The Bone People, p.111

Authentic Power

"It's hard to know what authentic power is; we've had so few examples of it. For so long power has been a matter of control and dominion, the thing that keeps people up and others down, the blood that feeds the hierarchy.

The kind of power women need is not ruthless, controlling, self-serving, dominion-seeking power - power without benefit of love. It is not staying up by keeping others down. What we need is a potent, forceful power, yes, but one that is also compassionate, that enables others as well.

'The true representation of power is not a big man beating a small man or woman,' Carolyn Heilbrun writes. Nor is it a woman beating up on a man or finding a place in the hierarchy and mimicking the old patriarchal ways on entitlement, control, and command. Rather, Heilbrun says, power is 'the ability to take one's place in whatever discourse is essential to action and the right to have one's part matter'."

Sue Monk Kidd (2002) The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, Harper, San Francisco, p.199

Maya Angelou tells it like it is ...

No matter what has been done to the oppressed, no matter how long we have been on our knees, no matter the injustice, no matter, for in the end we will find away and we will rise. BE ASSURED WE ... WILL ... RISE ...

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.